The man who voted to confirm Pam Bondi, who cast the decisive vote to move Markwayne Mullin through committee, who has been the single most Trump-friendly Democrat in the entire United States Senate, will not vote for Todd Blanche. John Fetterman is where Trump's attorney general nomination goes to die, and that is a sentence nobody saw coming twelve months ago.
Fetterman Draws an Actual Line
Speaking on Jon Stewart's podcast Wednesday, Fetterman was asked directly whether he would vote to confirm Blanche as attorney general. His answer was not complicated. "I'm not going to vote for him," Fetterman said, adding that he tries to "call balls and strikes" on Trump nominees rather than oppose them reflexively.
This is worth pausing on. Fetterman has voted to confirm roughly half of Trump's Cabinet picks, according to a Fox News Digital review. He was the only Democrat in the chamber to vote for Pam Bondi. He showed up for Markwayne Mullin twice, including casting the single decisive vote that pushed Mullin's nomination out of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on an 8-7 squeaker. The man has receipts as a bipartisan dealmaker. And he looked at Todd Blanche and said: no.
The Math Is Getting Ugly for Blanche
Here is where the numbers stand. Bondi cleared the Senate 54-46, with Fetterman as her lone Democratic supporter. Blanche already starts with at least two fewer votes than that tally, because both Fetterman and Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine have announced public opposition.
Collins made her position clear Tuesday. "Mr. Blanche has taken several actions that have further eroded the department's independence, and that is the basis for my vote to oppose his confirmation," she said. This is the same Susan Collins who voted to confirm Blanche as assistant attorney general back in March. Something changed her mind between March and now, and she's not being subtle about what.
Beyond Collins, The Hill reports that Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are still undecided. In a chamber where Republicans hold 53 seats, losing Collins plus one more puts Blanche underwater. Losing Collins and two more and it's over.
How Two 'No' Votes Flipped to 'Yes'
Not everything is going wrong for Blanche. Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina had previously signaled opposition but flipped to yes votes after Blanche agreed to abandon a planned "anti-weaponization fund" at the Justice Department. Whether that concession is enough to paper over the remaining skeptics is the central question now hanging over the nomination.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Blanche to the full Senate on a strict 12-10 party line vote, meaning every Republican on the committee held. The floor vote will be a different calculation entirely.
What Blanche Actually Did to Earn This
It is worth understanding why both a moderate Republican from Maine and a Democrat who votes with Trump half the time arrived at the same conclusion. Collins pointed specifically to the erosion of DOJ independence under Blanche's tenure as acting attorney general. That is not a small criticism. That is the core, foundational job description of the attorney general: be the nation's top law enforcement officer, not the president's personal fixer.
Blanche, for those who missed the earlier acts of this drama, was previously Donald Trump's personal criminal defense attorney. He defended Trump in the New York hush money case. He then became acting attorney general. That sequence of events alone should have generated more scrutiny than it did, but the Senate Judiciary Committee moved him through anyway, 12-10, and now the full Senate has to decide whether any of that matters.
What Fetterman Is Actually Doing Here
Fetterman's critics on the left have spent months accusing him of being a Republican in all but name, pointing to his vote record on Cabinet confirmations as evidence that he has simply given up on Democratic politics. His supporters argue he is doing exactly what a senator from a purple state should do: evaluate nominees on the merits, not the party label.
The Blanche vote is, inadvertently, evidence for the Fetterman defense. If he were simply rubber-stamping Trump nominees out of political cowardice or ideological drift, he would vote yes on Blanche the same way he voted yes on Bondi. Instead, he drew a line. Whatever you think of where that line is, or how late it arrived, it is a real line.
The Dingo Take
Todd Blanche was Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyer. Then he became acting attorney general. Now he cannot secure a confirmation vote from a Democrat who voted to confirm Pam Bondi. Read that sentence again slowly. The man defended Trump in court, walked into the Justice Department, and proceeded to run it in ways that alarmed Susan Collins enough to flip her vote between March and now. If your tenure as acting attorney general is so aggressively partisan that you lose a senator who already confirmed you once to a different job, you have achieved something truly special.
The Republican math here is brutal and simple. Collins is out. Cassidy and Murkowski are wobbling. Republicans hold 53 seats, which means they can lose three and still confirm on a tie-breaker, but they cannot lose four. Cornyn and Tillis were bought back with a promise to kill the anti-weaponization fund, which, fine, great. But the remaining holdouts have not indicated they want anything Blanche is willing to give them. They seem to want a functioning, independent Department of Justice. That is not currently on the menu.
Fetterman will take grief from the left for every yes vote he has cast in the last eighteen months, and some of that grief is deserved. But he is not voting for Blanche, and right now that matters. The nomination is in real trouble. Collins is out, Fetterman is out, and somewhere in Alaska and Louisiana two senators are staring at their phones hoping someone else makes this decision for them. Nobody is coming to save you, gentlemen. Pick a lane.
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